Island of Shadows (25 page)

On the distant horizon, a line of pale light showed where the sun would rise. A nearby rocky outcrop cast blue shadows across the snow, where lines of tiny pawprints broke up the smooth white surface.

“It looks as if there might be more prey around here,” Toklo said to the white bears, sniffing the air. “Let's hunt.”

“Okay,” Kallik replied. “Yakone, that looks like a frozen stream over there. Let's follow it.”

“I'll go this way, then.” Toklo padded off along the ridge in the direction they were heading.

“Wait for me!” Nanulak squealed, bounding across the snow to catch up with Toklo.

Toklo turned to face the younger bear. “No, we can't leave Lusa by herself. Besides, you need to stay in hiding so the white bears don't find you. Stay here and dig out a den, so it's ready for when we get back.”

“But—” Nanulak began to protest, then seemed to realize there would be no point. He padded back to Lusa, his head down, his paws kicking up the snow.

Lusa wasn't sure she wanted to be left alone with Nanulak, but she told herself not to be mean.
Maybe I was wrong to think he left me stranded that night. Besides, he's Toklo's friend, so he should be my friend, too.

“Come on, Nanulak,” she said, trying to sound cheerful in spite of her tiredness. “I'll help you build the den.”

“Okay. Under here would be a good place.” Nanulak headed for the snowdrifts at the bottom of the rocky outcrop and began to dig.

For a moment Lusa admired the strong swipes of his paws, before coming to dig alongside him. “Your paws are just like Kallik's,” she said. “It's great that you have strengths from different kinds of bear.”

Nanulak just grunted.

“You remind me a bit of Ujurak,” she went on, hoping she could make Nanulak talk to her. “In a way, you've got different shapes, just like him!”

Nanulak paused in his digging for a moment to look at her. “What do you mean?” he asked. “You all keep mentioning Ujurak, but I don't see why he was so important.”

“Oh, Ujurak was great!” Lusa replied enthusiastically. “He was a brown bear most of the time, but he could change his shape and be whatever he wanted.”

Nanulak's eyes stretched wide. “He could do
what
?”

“Change his shape.” Lusa realized that maybe she should be more careful about what she told Nanulak. She didn't want him to think that she was telling lies.
Nanulak isn't likely to believe that Ujurak could turn into a flat-face!
“Like … if we needed to know which way to go, he could change into a bird and spy out the land. Or once he changed into a mule deer and led some wolves away from us.”

Nanulak paused for a moment, then began scraping at the snow again. Lusa carried on digging beside him, but she found the silence awkward.

“Ujurak always knew which way to go,” she went on at last. “He could read signs in the landscape.”

“What sort of signs?”

“Oh … like the way bushes were growing, or how rocks were placed.” Lusa guessed that Nanulak would find that hard to believe, too. She didn't mention the stranger signs Ujurak could interpret, like the way the wind blew the clouds. “He taught me how to do it,” she added, “but I was never as good at it as he was.”

“Weird,” Nanulak commented. “I guess Toklo didn't like that.”

Lusa let out a little snort of amusement. “Not at first,” she admitted. “But he learned to trust Ujurak, just like Kallik and I did.” Then her amusement faded as she realized something was strange about Nanulak's remark.

“Why do you think Toklo wouldn't like it?” she asked curiously.

Nanulak shrugged. “Signs and stuff … it's not what brown bears do. But then, it sounds like Ujurak wasn't really a brown bear.”

“Yes, he was!” Lusa retorted, stung. “I told you, most of the time he was a brown bear, and that's the way he felt most comfortable.”

“Okay…” Nanulak kicked a shower of snow behind him from the hollow where the den was taking shape. “How did Toklo meet Ujurak?”

“I'm not sure,” Lusa replied. “I wasn't with them then. But I think he helped Ujurak when he was … when he was in another shape.”
I
won't
tell Nanulak that he was a flat-face!
“Ujurak was quite young then.”

“I see.” For some reason Nanulak sounded pleased. “I guess Toklo was sorry for him.”

Lusa wasn't sure what to say. She knew that Nanulak had it wrong. Toklo had felt protective toward Ujurak, but never sorry for him.
Angry, exasperated, worried … but never sorry.
But she didn't know how she could explain that to a bear who had never known Ujurak.

“Ujurak wasn't helpless,” she said. “Sometimes he got into stuff he couldn't handle, but we've all done that. Sometimes I think Ujurak was the strongest of all of us.”

Nanulak let out a snort, as if he wasn't about to accept that. “Maybe he made you think so.” He paused, then added, “A creature like that couldn't be Toklo's
real
friend.”

Lusa stopped digging and gazed at Nanulak, biting back an angry response. She didn't know what to say in reply; she wanted to defend Ujurak, but she could tell that Nanulak wasn't going to believe her. Awkwardly she scuffled her paws in the snow.

A tide of relief washed over her as she heard pawsteps behind her, and Toklo padded up with a hare in his jaws. Several minutes later, Kallik and Yakone appeared at the top of the outcrop; Kallik was carrying a goose.

“Toklo, great catch!” Nanulak exclaimed, bounding over to the brown bear and gazing at the hare with admiring eyes.

Lusa couldn't help noticing that he completely ignored Kallik and Yakone. “That's a good catch, too,” she told Kallik as the white bears padded down to join the others. “We'll eat well for once.”

“I'm sorry we didn't find any plants for you, Lusa,” Kallik said, dropping the goose.

“Never mind. I can eat meat.” Lusa tried to sound cheerful, although her belly heaved.

Part of her wanted to tell her friends about the odd conversation she had shared with Nanulak. But after a moment's thought, she kept it to herself.
I might not understand either if I hadn't known Ujurak.

Crouching down to take a mouthful of the goose, gagging on the fatty meat, all Lusa really wanted was to keep going until she could find some trees, more black bears, and a place that felt like home. She imagined sunlight on her fur, and the fresh taste of berries bursting in her mouth.

I never want to see another snowflake for the rest of my life!

When they had swallowed the last mouthfuls of prey, the bears curled up in the den. Lusa slept uneasily, dreaming in snatches about the Bear Bowl. Then she found herself on the mountainside on Star Island once again, with the avalanche thundering down toward her.

“Ujurak!” she squealed.

Terror jerked her awake, and she realized that she was alone in the den. Red light was angling through the entrance, turning the snow outside the color of blood.

Lusa scrambled to her paws and padded out into the open. Kallik and Yakone stood close together a couple of bearlengths away, sniffing the air. Toklo and Nanulak were talking together a little farther off.

Toklo broke off as he spotted Lusa. “Good, you're awake,” he grunted. “Now we can get going.”

Feeling a bit guilty about how often she had traveled on Yakone's back, Lusa padded along beside Kallik as they set out. The sun was going down into a mass of ragged cloud. The cold air was like claws in Lusa's throat, but it didn't look as if there was more snow to come.

The red light of sunset was still in the sky when the bears reached the rim of a shallow valley on the edge of the ice cap. Thornbushes were thickly massed in the valley bottom; Lusa guessed there might be a stream or a pond down there, frozen and covered with snow.

“I'm going to run ahead for a bit,” she told Toklo. “I want to get some bark off those bushes, and there might even be a few berries.”

Toklo nodded. “Okay. But be careful.”

Lusa headed off, kicking up the snow as she bounded through it. Then she remembered how she had been trapped in ice after not looking where she was going, and slowed her pace to a brisk trot.

A scatter of feathers on the snow slowed her still further.
It looks as if a bird was killed here
, she thought.
Maybe there are bears around. Should I go back and warn the others?

But the bushes were quite close now, and Lusa's jaws were watering.
Just a few mouthfuls
, she promised herself, padding up to the nearest one and beginning to strip off the bark.

Then movement caught her eye; beyond the thorns she spotted a white bear loping along with a half-grown cub by her side. Lusa froze, thankful for the bushes that concealed her from them.
I should never have left the others
.
I was so bee-brained!

Then another smaller cub bounced out of the thicket and ran after the she-bear. Lusa stifled a gasp of astonishment.
That cub is brown!

Looking more closely, Lusa realized that the small cub could have been Nanulak's younger sister, with the sloping shoulders and muzzle of a white bear. And now she noticed that the mother bear had the shorter snout of a grizzly, while the older cub had patches of brown fur on his white pelt.

They're all mixtures, just like Nanulak!

When the bear family had passed by, Lusa emerged from hiding and pelted back to her companions, who were still making their way slowly down into the valley.

“There you are!” Toklo exclaimed as she dashed up to them. “You need to stay with us now. We—”

“There are white bears around!” Nanulak announced, wide-eyed with fear. “We saw their droppings.”

“I've seen the bears,” Lusa replied. “They're not white bears; they're mixtures, just like you. Three of them: a mother bear and two cubs.”

To her surprise, Nanulak didn't look pleased at her news, though Kallik and Yakone exchanged an interested glance.

“We should go meet them,” Kallik suggested. “They might know your family, Nanulak.”

Nanulak shrugged uneasily. “I don't want to meet them. I'm a brown bear now.”

“Well, if we head this way, we're likely to come across them,” Toklo said. His voice was decisive, as if he was nipping a possible argument in the bud. “There's nothing to worry about, Nanulak. It was white bears who attacked you, right?”

“Right,” Nanulak muttered, with a sulky look.

Yakone led the way down into the valley, tracking Lusa's pawsteps. Before they reached the bushes at the bottom, Lusa spotted the mother bear and the two cubs examining something in the snow a little way off.

“Hello there!” Yakone called out, veering in their direction. Lusa and the others followed, though Lusa could see that Nanulak was dragging his paws.

The mixed bears looked up at the sound of Yakone's voice and trotted over to meet them, the small cub keeping very close to his mother.

“Hi.” Toklo spoke warily, stepping in front of Yakone so he was the first to encounter the new bears.

“Hi.” The mother bear spoke first. Her gaze traveled over the others with friendly interest, though her eyes widened with surprise when she spotted Lusa.
I don't suppose she's ever seen a black bear
, Lusa thought.

“I don't think we've met before,” the she-bear went on.

“No, we're just passing through.” Kallik stepped forward to Toklo's side and dipped her head politely. “We're on our way to the Frozen Sea.”

“Oh, I've heard about that!” the she-bear said. “It's supposed to be a really good place for white bears.”

“You know it!” Kallik looked overjoyed. “Is it far?”

The mother bear shook her head. “That I couldn't tell you. I don't travel much,” she added apologetically. “I'm happy here in this valley. My mate is always traveling, though. We don't see much of him during snow-sky. I don't think he's ever visited the Frozen Sea himself, but he's met other bears who have.”

“We know we have to get off this island and cross the sea again,” Yakone said. “Are we going in the right direction?”

“Yes, you're fine,” the brown bear told him. “Keep going along the ridge, and when you get to the end, veer in that direction.” She gestured with a paw. “Pretty soon you'll come to a deep gully, and that leads to a slope that takes you right down to the coast. Or so my mate tells me.”

“Great, thanks,” Yakone replied.

While the other bears were talking, Nanulak kept to the back of their group, as if he didn't want to be seen. Lusa was still surprised that he wasn't more excited to see bears who were mixtures like him.

“Hey, look!” She gave Nanulak a shove forward. “We're traveling with a bear who's just like you!”

Nanulak's paws skidded in the snow as he resisted, and he gave Lusa a glare. Lusa blinked back in astonishment.
What did I do?